With all the stress of being a college student, it is rare that I take a moment of my time to read a book that isn't assigned to me by a professor I pay a lot of money. Being a writer for The Odyssey, I am constantly surrounded by people who are so creative, brave, bold and inspiring. To be honest, sometimes it is a lot to handle. I got the chance this semester to read a book written by one of Texas A&M's own, Haley Walker, who also happens to be a writer for Odyssey.
At first I bought the book to support a teammate, an Aggie, and another writer trying to make sense of all that language has to offer.
Reading this book was easily one of the best things I have done in a long time.
So I've decided to compile a list of my favorite quotes from The Ubiquity Of It All. Whether this encourages you to read this book or not is beyond me, but I hope that these quotes just really touch you the way that they touched me when I first read them. Here are 15 of my favorite quotes that made me really stop reading and think for a minute:
1. "Every seven years, my body will have completely and successfully replaced all of its skin cells, and my calendar is marked for the celebratory day I get to be a human never touched by you. A life never grazed by yours. Because I belong to me. I always will, and this will always be."2. "...today the world screams do but the cross says did."
3. "I have the right to never come face to face with an unreasonable search and seizure, yet when he takes what's mine with dissent, the court sides with his pleasure."
4. "Your heart must ooze His spirit and your life must be pressed to the Kingdom."
5. "Lukewarm is no good. Too many people like. You must love."
6. "I am watering myself, my petals flourish without your consent."
7. "I don't want to hold your hand, feel you nearer than a vein, on the outside I am calm but inside resides the insane."
8. "Someone right now as you read this sentence is breathing their last breath, and a different someone, perhaps on the other side of the world, is breathing their first."
9. "I wear you like that old coat you can't get rid of because it smells and feels like home no matter how much time has passed..."
10. "...perhaps I am just a lost soul constantly having a love affair with blank pieces of paper, trying to make the eruptive explosions of my thought in my head look like something everybody can read, trying to normalize the warzone, create black and white peace when hues of every color insist on drowning me."
11. "Despite everything, I woke up this morning."
12. "I understand people having the desire to escape me because often I wish I could do the same."
13. "We are more magical than any shooting star, more infinite than any black hole."
14. "I hope there are tattoos proclaiming the story of my life as if I am a picture book, waiting to be asked about."
15. "We are blindly rushing towards the real world with no ounce of certainty in our fiber."
And that's only 15 lines of the entire BOOK written by Haley. If that doesn't make you want to jump on Amazon and grab yourself a copy, I'm not sure what will.
